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Gadgets That Spy On Us: Way More Than TVs

Posted by timothy on from the it-looks-like-you're-writing-a-letter dept.

Presto Vivace writes with a reminder that it's not just Samsung TVs — lots of other gadgets are spying on you "But Samsung's televisions are far from the only seeing-and-listening devices coming into our lives. If we're going to freak out about a Samsung TV that listens in on our living rooms, we should also be panicking about a number of other emergent gadgets that capture voice and visual data in many of the same ways. .... Samsung's competitor, the LG Smart TV, has basically the same phrase about voice capture in its privacy policy: "Please be aware that if your spoken word includes personal or other sensitive information, such information will be among the Voice Information captured through your use of voice recognition features." It isn't just TVs, Microsoft's xBox Kinect, Amazon Echo, GM's Onstar, Chevrolet's MyLink and PDRs, Google's Waze, and Hello's Sense all have snooping capabilities. Welcome to the world of Stasi Tech.

5 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Who uses any of that crap anyway? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Hipsters and upper middle class snobs. They've already long ago handed over their privacy.

    1. Re:Who uses any of that crap anyway? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If you think Kia, Hyundia, VW, Mazdas, et al. Can't remotely disable their newer cars too, you're gonna have a bad time.

  2. LG TV by CastrTroy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have an LG TV and it has a stupid voice recognition feature. You have to press a button on the remote for it to start listening to you. The feature is pretty much completely useless. I tried it a few times when I first got the TV, but quickly found that it's pretty much worthless. The rest of the TV works really well though, and I have no complaints. I don't see the purpose of even building this feature into the TV. Nobody will use it, and nobody is going to make a TV buying decision based on rather or not it has voice recognition. Except maybe some people who will specifically be looking for a TV that doesn't have the feature.

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  3. The irony by fateblossom · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The first thing I saw when I open the article was "Like us on Facebook"
    An article about whats tracking us. But wont you just lets us track you as well before you read it. :-)

  4. Re:Checklist: Complete by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 5, Interesting

    my last tv purchase 'had' to be smart. why? because I wanted to buy from a trusted store (costco), they have only a limited of in-store brands and since I refused to buy samsung (at any cost), that left vizio. after 39" (or 37) they only sell them in 'smart' versions, sigh. so mine is smart.

    but I never accepted the eula, it never init'd the network layer, it sits there with 0.0.0.0 on it (if I ever go to that screen) and the only down side is that I won't get firmware updates. but the good side is: I wont' get firmware updates! LOL

    in fact, it is an upside. people are complaining about the latest forced no-choice OTA firmware that people got. they all want to revert. and so, my never-been-on-the-net tv will never have to be reverted. it works as a display device, the colors look ok once I calibrated it with my puck and my htpc system has never been better (intel onboard video, i7 fanless build, 1920 hdmi at 120hz real actual refresh. very nice!)

    but to get that, I had to pay for a smart tv. which means I helped support this silliness with my money. for that, I'm sorry, but I didn't have a lot of real choice..

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